Price surge of steelmaking ingredient has created a huge cash windfall for big producers
Current iron ore prices of US$100/tonne should be enough to spark activation of about 60 million tonnes of swing production to “balance the market”, according to BMO, with perhaps 40Mt of that coming from China.
A STOCK STRATEGIST INDUSTRY REPORTS by Mathew Hodge
Near-term tightness in the iron ore market has persisted and intensified, with several developments in Brazil further restricting Vale’s (VALE)supply and Cyclone Veronica off Australia interrupting Pilbara shipments. We’ve factored in a reduction of another 20 million tonnes in Vale’s output in 2019 and 10 million tonnes in 2020. We now expect Vale to produce 350 million tonnes in 2019 and 370 million tonnes in 2020, down from an estimated 390 million tonnes in 2018. For Rio Tinto (RIO), BHP (BHP), and Fortescue, we’ve lowered our forecasts by 10 million tonnes in total for 2019 due to the cyclone. The estimated 30 million tonnes of lost supply from Vale and the Pilbara in 2019 is a more than 1% reduction to the seaborne iron ore market.
Disruptions mean that higher-cost iron ore is needed to balance the market, such as from domestic mines in China. The iron ore price has averaged $83 per tonne year to date, well ahead of our prior $65 per tonne forecast for 2019. Accordingly, we are raising our near-term iron ore forecasts to $73 in 2019, $60 in 2020, and $50 per tonne in 2021. Our prior forecasts were $65 in 2019, $55 in 2020, and $40 per tonne in 2021. Our unchanged $40 per tonne long-term forecast now starts a year later, in 2022.
Flybe Group FLYB announces the start of its alliance with Eastern Airways (UK) Ltd. The two have signed a joint revenue and risk sharing agreement, covering four Eastern aircraft, to fly existing Flybe branded routes from Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester. These flights start today, and will significantly enhance connectivity in Scotland.
Ramsdens Holdings RFX updates on trading, and says the strong foreign exchange results, jewellery retail initiatives and strong gold price leads it to expect that interim and full year PBT will be significantly ahead of market expectations.
Rio Tinto RIO completes the sale of its wholly-owned subsidiary Coal & Allied Industries Ltd to Yancoal Australia Ltd for a total consideration of $2.69bn. Under the terms of the sale, Rio may also receive an additional royalty linked to the coal price capped at $410m.
TechFinancials TECH reports a fall in interim group revenues of $6.97m (H1 2016: $9.86m), on gross profit down to $4.87m (H1 2016: $7.36m). Basic EPS decreased to a loss of $0.0109 from a profit of $0.0065 in H1 2016. CEO Asaf Lahav said the board anticipates that the remainder of this financial year “will continuing to be challenging within the binary options market until there is clarity surrounding the on-going regulatory consultations. “
Vertu Motors VTU provides a pre-close trading update and says since the 26 July AGM, it has continued to trade in line with the trends set out in that update and in line with market expectations.
Redrow RDW With a 50% increase in the interim dividend Redrow adds itself to the list of today’s companies proclaiming robust performances. Completions rose by 13% in the six months to 31st December and revenue up 23%, rose to record levels. The gap between the rise in completions and revenue appears to indicate there may have been a a good rise in average selling prices. Profit before tax, surged by 35% as did private orders which leaves the overall order book also standing at record levels.
Smurfitt Kappa Grp SKG is increasing its final dividend by 20% after producing a strong set of results for the year to 31st December. Profit before tax rose by 9% on revenue up by 1% and basic earnings per share by10%. EBITDA broke new records and was the strongest ever.
Dunelm DNLM increased market share in a challenging environment during the half year to 31st December when trading proved to be slightly softer than the company would have liked. Sales fell by 1.6%. profit before tax by 11.3% and EBITDA by 19.5%. But the important bit is that shareholders are kept happy with an 8.3% rise to 6.5p., in the interim dividend.
Grainger plc GRI reports a robust sales performance and even better, a robust pipeline. In fact the figures show that the total sales pipeline for full year 17 were exactly the same as for 2016. Completed sales did rise but only from £47m. to £49m. todays update for the 4 months to 31st January claims a good start to the year with 3.4% like for like rental growth for the year to date and 2.8% like for like rental growth on their PRS rental homes. Demand for rental homes continues to be strong and at the same time the company is on target to achieve its planned reduction in overheads.
Sophos Group SOPH produced a third quarter rise in billings of 16.1%, with strong momentum continuing. The Americas delivered growth of 20%. Cash generation for the quarter was strong with a rise of 28.4% in unlevered free cash flow, making a total increase over the first 9 months of 136.2% and expectations of the figure doubling by the year end.
Rio Tinto RIO said that the rally in commodities was not sustainable but as we reported on Wednesday RIO’s first quarter growth reached double digit figures with copper up by 27% on the previous quarter. At the same time BHP Billiton BHP cut its iron ore production target for the first time in fifteen years.
Even silver, which has for a number of years steadfastly refused to perform its expected role as a tracker of gold , has suddenly shot up to become the best performing commodity of 2016, helped by huge demand from hedge funds and Chinese investors. In only eleven days this month the price of silver jumped by by 14%. Hedge funds bullish positions on silver are now at their highest since 2006. The last time they were so bullish on gold was in 2011 when the price of gold had reached the dizzy heights of $1900 per oz.
An almost infallible measure of the health of the world’s mining industry is Caterpillar CAT. Again as we reported last month, Caterpillars sales figures were forecasting a global collapse in mining production and mining activity. In only a few weeks the turn round has been so dramatic that Caterpillar has had to rush out updated figures showing that the rate of decline in machine sales had fallen sharply in all of its markets and that for March they were down by only 13% compared to March last year, whilst the figures for January and February had been down by 21% and 15% respectively. Hedge funds and speculators do not buy mining machinery. Only miners do that.